Bradley vs. Marquez close to being finalized

By Allan Fox: WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (30-0, 12 KO’s) has reportedly signed the contract for a fight with Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s) that is tentatively scheduled for September 14th at the Thomas & Mack Center, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. Marquez still hasn’t signed the contract but he’s expected.

The Bradley-Marquez fight may get moved to October 12th if Floyd Mayweather decides he wants to fight on September 14th in a PPV fight bout against possibly Saul “Canelo” Alvarez at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Bob Arum of Top Rank, the promoter for Bradley, doesn’t want to go up against the Mayweather fight because it would mean lousy ratings for the Bradley-Marquez fight.

It’s difficult to understand Bradley or Marquez’s decision to fight each other instead of choosing to fight Manny Pacquiao and get a lot more money. Both Bradley and Marquez had the option to fight Pacquiao but instead they chose to take a lot less money to fight each other.

Bradley still wants to fight Pacquiao, but after he faces Marquez first. In theory a Bradley-Pacquiao fight will be bigger if Bradley beats Marquez first. I’m not sure that it will, but at least Bradley will have the chance to prove that he’s better than Marquez, even if it’s a 40-year-old Marquez.

Bradley is lucky to still have his World Boxing Organization title because he took a lot of punishment in his last fight in beating Ruslan Provodnikov by a 12 round unanimous decision last March. Bradley was knocked down in that fight and hurt badly on several occasions by big shots from Provodnikov.

After the fight Bradley talked as if he was groggy from the big shots, and he said he had suffered a minor concussion in the fight. It’s going to be interesting to see how Bradley takes the hard shots from Marquez because he can punch as hard as Provodnikov, but he’s a lot more accurate with his shots.

The only thing that Bradley has going for him in this fight is that he’s a lot younger and Marquez doesn’t throw a lot of punches, so Bradley could end up outworking Marquez.